Martin Scorsese is, simply put, the greatest living director in the world. He has heavily influenced some of the best directors working now such as Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, and has directed some of the best films ever made. He has directed films in just about every genre, but since it’s the 40th anniversary of his first major film Mean Streets, I’ve selected the four films that I think describe his filmmaking the best. The list is alphabetical and is not a “four best list” at all. I just want to display the main reasons why Scorsese is so revered as a master director.
1. The King of Comedy
What really makes this film shine is how relevant the topic is to the times we’re living in at the moment, which is what ultimately secured its place on this list. As long as celebrities are revered this film will continue to be an extremely important indictment on the oddity of celebrity-obsessed culture. The ending, which was highly illogical when the film was released, is almost prophetic now in the way that Rupert Pupkin gains all the fame he had so desired by doing a horrible act of kidnapping. The trick with the ending is that the audience is never sure if it’s a dream or not, but the fact that one could believe it is a reality speaks more for the film than anything. This is one of the oddest and most underrated films ever made.
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7 Comments
Even better with Scorcher is that he doesn’t rest on his laurels. You’ve got directors out there riding on the waves of success they had years ago, but Martino Scolicarno keeps the hits coming like El Departo and stuff. Lovely, lovely stuff.
IMO, The Aviator and Hugo deserve to be on that list, merely because The Aviator was both a biopic to Howard Hughes and to the era itself and Hugo was an amazing high wire act balancing between Kids Flick and Cinephile’s Dream. (Bonus points to Hugo for filming in 3D, and still remaining the one of the most breathtaking usages of the medium yet.)
Still, you’ve got a great, distilled list and for that I praise you, good sir.
I love both of those films a great deal and certainly agree with you. Hugo is the best use of 3D I’ve seen yet and I generally dislike 3D. It’s just such a huge challenge to narrow down 40 years of excellence into four movies.
I think an often overlooked movie he nailed was Cape Fear. The way he shot it with those angles and music… the tension was incredible. I absolutely love how he designs shots. I have never seen anyone come close with the consistency he has.
Great shout about Taxi Driver, one of my absolute favourites. One of the more understated pieces of genius is the use of HIMSELF as the maniacal character in the back of Travis’s taxi that arguably tips him over the edge. In a perverse kind of way, since the character himself was designed to be ‘just another guy’, using a non-actor adds weight and subtlety to him.
Dolan,
I really enjoyed your fresh writing style and look forward to reading other posts.
Since the 1970′s, Scorsese has been producing one great Picture after the next. Raging Bull was arguably the greatest film of the 80′s, & Goodfellas could only be outdone by Shindler’s List in the 90′s. Taxi Driver was also an absolute Classic. Scorsese is consistent, & hasn’t been riding on previous successes, as is the case with: George Lucas; Spielberg; Copolla etc.